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F-4B / F-110 Rear Canopy Blackout Curtain


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Are there any resources out there that show the rear canopy blackout curtain in early Phantoms?  I've come up empty after searching the net.  Only a few pics from the outside and from a distance.  

 

Cheers.


Duane

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Color photos of early B model F-4s in my dad’s CV-59 Med cruise cruise book indicate the curtains are black.  I thought the RIO’s canopy was painted black on the inside for the longest time until somebody here straightened me out.  I vote for black over OD.

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1 hour ago, Oldbaldguy said:

Color photos of early B model F-4s in my dad’s CV-59 Med cruise cruise book indicate the curtains are black.  I thought the RIO’s canopy was painted black on the inside for the longest time until somebody here straightened me out.  I vote for black over OD.

I vote for a Greyish Green :) 

 

 

Blackout Curtain 3

 

Edited by Peter Greengrass
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After posting the photo above of 105, I noted that there's a string running lengthways along the top of the aft canopy. Presumably to provide both a means to keep the blackout curtain up and to assist in drawing the curtain forward and back (though former RIO, Jan Jacobs informed me once that it (the curtain) "Didn't last long. Would come forward on a trap, plus it was just a general pain-in-the-ass to move forward and back") 

 

A couple more photos that show this string (the second photo comes from an accident report from my collection, the ejection seat is out of its normal position as it broke loose and moved forward during the crash landing) 

 

Blackout Curtain String 1

 

Blackout Curtain String 2

 

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Yikes. I'm hoping the RIO's seat was unoccupied during that event. He'd have eaten a sizable chunk of that instrument panel. Great pics otherwise and thanks for sharing. Always amazing to look at the number of changes the Phantom went through in that real short timeframe from introduction and the early years of Rolling Thunder.

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